Stonehenge

Had a ride on my bike down to Stonehenge. Place swarming with tourists of course. Felt a bit sorry for them really.

To be honest I find Stonehenge a bit of an anti-climax. One expects so much, having seen all those great iconic photographs of the monument.

When you get there you find a main road running through the site only 100 yards from the stones; a drab and dismal visitors centre; barbed wire; a gaggle of coaches.

You pay your seven quid and go through a tunnel that leads under the road. You emerge onto a narrow tarmac path that is roped off at both sides. You are trapped on this path with the hundreds of other visitors, led by the nose around the monument, about fifty feet away from the giant monoliths -- that actually don`t look quite as monolithic as you expect, dwarfed by a huge expanse of sky, kinda lost in their landscape.

There are plans to improve this World Heritage site, but they`ve been prevaricating over the details for years.

The road needs digging up and returning to grass. The visitors centre needs to be resited about half a mile away, possibly with a full-size replica of how the monument would have looked in its prime. You should then be allowed to walk across the open land, approaching the stones at your own pace, from your own chosen point of view. Obviously no-one should be allowed to touch the stones. Otherwise some idiots would carve their names to prove they were there.

I got there at noon. Ate a quick packed lunch. Walked across the road and took a quick Blip. Once back home I transformed the photograph to a vision of how I would like to see Stonehenge:

At night beneath a fiery starry sky...

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